Robin, Rising
by missmelon12
Summary: Robin dies, but it's only the beginning of his journey. An 'Under the Red Hood' inspired AU. Multiple Pairings, including m/m, f/m.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Please follow me on tumblr, cooltitsmelon, or on twitter, melonbug12, for updates and progress tidbits for this and other fics. Thanks for reading, please review_

* * *

A broken rib punctured his lung, sharp and painful. Robin could feel it in his labored, raspy breaths, in the warmth that flooded his chest with each passing moment as he became closer and closer to losing his desperate struggle to keep breathing. He coughed, ragged, and the taste of copper filled his mouth, sharp on his tongue.

He wished for death, for any kind of relief, and desperately he reached out, frantically trying to pull himself from the crazed man standing above him.

 _Bam_

Steel collided with his ribs once more and he screamed, a spray of blood leaving his mouth to coat the cold concrete below him. The force of it sent him sprawling and he landed hard on his back, pain coursing through his entire body.

Above him, the Joker laughed that rough infamous laugh of his, Robins blood smeared across his face like warpaint, crowbar in his hands.

"Bats isn't coming for you this time," he sing songed and Robin squeezed his eyes closed as yet another swing of the weapon collided hard with his shoulder. He heard the sickening crunch of his collar bone shattering before he felt it and the he spasmed hard from the pain, screaming again.

 _Maybe if he screamed loud enough someone would hear him_

It had been hours and maybe it would go on for hours more, he didn't know. All he knew was the steady dripdrip of a leaky pipe somewhere in the distance, the constant ticktick of what could only be a nearby clock, the distinctive crack of bones breaking, _his_ bones breaking.

Eventually, blissfully, it stopped. The sound of steel colliding with the palm of the Joker's hand between swings vanished, where it had before been a steady, rhythmic noise amongst the chaos, and Robin could hear only the footsteps left in its wake, could feel the sound of them where hiss cheek was pressed against the concrete.

"I'm sorry to end all the fun," the Joker called out from somewhere behind him. There was a loud clunk, the sound of the crowbar hitting the ground. "But I've places to be, little birdy—" Robin's heart pounded suddenly loud and hard in his ears and the his voice warbled and faded beneath it.

There was a loud noise nearby and Robin searched frantically for something, anything, and finally saw that the Joke was gone, finally _finally_ , and he took a deep, ragged breath and attempted to push himself upright. He fell hard against the wall beside him, eyes rolling in his head. There was so much blood where he had been lying, so much blood all over him and he stared at it in horror, body sticky with it, mind catching up to the reality of how bad his situation truly was.

His vision swam, spots dancing before his eyes, taunting him with the end. And he wanted it, wanted it hours ago when the pain had peaked and he had lost consciousness from it the first time. He leaned his head back against the cool wall and wondered if he had the strength to end it himself, before the Joker came back. He could bit his tongue off, maybe, and he worked his jaw carefully, felt lightheaded with the sharp pain that it brought him as he did so, and he idly realized that it was broken. Maybe he could still manage it, or maybe he would pass out from the pain before he could succeed, he didn't know.

Or maybe Batman would come for him. Maybe the team?

He wondered if they even knew he was missing, if Batman even bothered to tell them.

His head lolled slightly and in the encroaching darkness of his periphery he caught a glimmer of light and he followed it, slow, feeling every agonizing turn of his head and finally his eyes landed on a clock: digital and full of wires and noises he previously hadn't registered and attached rather crudely to what could only be a very large bomb.

7 seconds, it said, and Robin looked at it, eyes wide. _Oh_

5 seconds, and he realized Batman wasn't coming for him.

He closed his eyes and waited to die.

* * *

As he came to know life again, he first knew rage, buried deep and angry within his chest and clawing, clawing, violent to come forth, the first of many feelings to come to him but the dominant one of them all _rage_.

This was life as he knew it in the earliest moments, born into ancient green waters that scalded him, pulled at him and threatened to rip from him life no sooner than he had come to know it, to bring him back down into the wispy embrace of death. He surfaced screaming, swallowing down his first breath, desperate breath, which burned his lungs with its coldness. His whole body came alive with the power of it and the thick smell of ozone and fire settled deep within his lungs, which heaved from the effort of bringing them air.

He stood, at last, in the green waters, shaking and trembling and casting his gaze about the room, all at once frightened and confused. He stood surrounded by men, all of them dangerous and dressed head to toe in black, and in their hands were weapons and on their faces looks of horror. A man stepped forward from the others, almost wizened in his age and appearance, so different from the others he looked, and he regarded him carefully.

"Richard," the man said. He stared back at him, meeting those eyes which seemed to pull at something very deep in his soul, and he blinked once at the unfamiliar name and the man, seeing this, spoke again, "Robin," and the name struck a chord in him and, slowly, the rage that had been building within began to unwind itself.

He screamed once more, the fury unfolding all encompassing, his body trembling from it and he stumbled towards the man, consumed only with the thought of that man's death at his hands. His hands curled into fists, nails breaking the tender flesh of his palm and he lunged for the man, screaming out his rage until his throat was raw from it and until he's left hoarse, his scream turning into a quiet rasp as he attacks.

The world blacked out around him.

* * *

He came back to himself, as much as is possible, to the heart in throat feeling of freefall and his body slamming hard into frigid waters and _pain_.

For hours he tread water and eventually he made it to shore, crawling from the waters shaking and trembling with the cold. His skin was ice, his body exposed and nude, and he curled into a ball and waited to die.

He woke sometime later, _alive_.

* * *

Nearby was a city, large and sprawling. Thievery came almost naturally to him and he subsisted there on it for weeks, maybe months. Time was not a luxury he had the ability to keep track of. At some point, he found clothing, rags that did little to fight off the biting grip of cold, and it was always cold there, _always_.

Hunger quickly became an ever present friend, as well, a constant pain in the pit of his stomach, gnawing at him, sapping from him of all his strength. Street markets were well watched and he got caught and beaten often enough to be a deterrent. He stole, instead, from trashcans and dumpsters, seeking charity where he could, though it came not often enough from the people around him. Instead, they recoiled at the sight of him, pulling away and avoiding him same as they all avoided each other.

He slept in dirty alleys, tucked into crannies, curled into a tight ball for warmth. He used papers and rags to keep from freezing to death and it worked well enough because he woke every time, alive to face the horrors of the world around him once more.

And he blacked out often, lucidity coming and going. In his lucid moments he had an awareness of the world around him, of the suffering he felt, but in the less lucid moments he didn't know what he did or where he went, only that sometimes he came to and he had food or money, but also hands stained with blood, sometimes his, sometimes not. Other times, he came to and didn't know where he was, having found himself suddenly in an unfamiliar part of the city, with hunger worse than it had ever been before. But always he came back to himself feeling more whole, in some sense of the word.

He didn't know what he did in those times but he didn't dwell on it, because it was time spent unaware of how hungry and cold and tired he was and, in some ways, the blackouts got him through, though as time went on more and more of it became lost to the madness, such that at times he would wake and _know_ weeks had passed, lost to the insanity creeping over him.

And always, just beneath the surface, there was a rage he kept barely restrained, only dissipated after his long bouts of lost time. He suspected the rage drew him there, that the anger in him, directionless but consuming, found direction in those times, but he didn't dwell on that, either, so focused as he was on merely surviving.

Sometimes the blackness was triggered by something he saw: a man laughing too loud on a street corner, a teen walking by him, grinning ear to ear so much so that the smile split his face in half and stirred something angry and cold within him. And during those times he'd blink and suddenly he was somewhere else, hours or days later, lost and confused.

* * *

Eventually, he came to and thought maybe he was in a different city than before, but he didn't know. He'd never known where he was, only that it was city after city and town after town of people who wouldn't look at him, who spoke a language he didn't understand and drove him away in fear when he approached.

And maybe they had reason to fear him, he didn't know, he didn't remember.

He had no idea who he was or _why_ he was, no memories before the green waters, before drawing his first breath. But he remembered that much, knew that before that moment he had not been alive, and the knowledge frightened him.

 _Robin_ echoed in his mind not for the first time since that first moment and he wondered what it meant. It had been spoken to him not quite as a name but as a title, but all the same it felt comfortable on his tongue and he spent hours turning it around in his mouth, repeating it again and again until it became a mantra to keep him sane.

Digging through a dumpster, looking for food, he came across a mirror, a shattered fragment tossed aside for its uselessness, buried with so much other garbage he almost didn't see it. Careful, he picked it up, peering into it, at the fragments of a gaunt face that stared back.

And he was thin, with protruding cheekbones and tired, deepset eyes, all covered in a layer of filth and dirt that came from living on the streets. His face was so dirty he couldn't tell its true shade and he scrubbed idly at his cheek with an even dirtier hand, which only made it worse, leaving a now cloudy smudge down the side of his face.

His eyes were most startling, blue and vibrant and so _so_ bright against the filth of the rest of him. They stared back at him, the only thing familiar on his face, taunting him with what he couldn't remember and all those things about himself he didn't know.

His hair was black, beneath its own dirtiness, matted and choppy, almost chin length. He reached up to touch a lock and it was coarse as always, made brittle from malnutrition and poor hygiene. A few strands came free with his tugging, but stayed tangled in the dark mop.

He stared back at his reflection for too long, maybe hours, entranced by all things it didn't tell him. Eventually, though, he tossed away the shard and went back to the work at hand.

He didn't turn up any food.

* * *

As time went on the weather began to get colder and colder as winter came on fast. He hardly noticed as the months passed, spending less and less time lucid, less time aware of the world around him. Weeks faded into weeks, lost to an unspeakable fury he couldn't quite quench in his saner moments.

He knew though, in the lucid moments, that he was being watched, could feel the eyes on him as he rummaged for food or huddled beneath his rags for warmth. Even as he darted through crowds of people, pickpocketing where he could, he could feel himself being watched in a way that was definitive and purposeful. He was being followed.

He came to after another black out to bodies scattered around him in a secluded alleyway, fresh blood spilled across rapidly falling snow, a sharp crimson against the soft powdered white. He counted three of them from where he stood, an ornate knife that could only have been stolen from them clenched in his hand.

The men were all dressed head to toe in black, the same distinctive outfitting he had seen on the men surrounding him when he'd first crawled from the green waters. Professional warriors, with combat gear and blades and he wondered how he'd gotten the upper hand against them. He looked down at the knife, at the hand holding it, and it was covered in blood, soaked all the way to the elbow and he knew none of it was his.

He moved quickly after that, dragging the bodies with what little strength he had until they were situated in shadow, where the snow would cover them and they would lay forgotten until what counted for spring in this place came and thawed them. He stole their clothes, thankful for the added warmth in the face of the coming blizzard, and he kept the knife, tucking it into a strip of cloth tied around his ankle, beneath the oversized pants he'd taken.

He left the bodies there in the alley and he purposefully didn't dwell on the lives he'd just taken as he set out instead to find shelter as the snowfall got worse.

He didn't remember killing them anyway and something dark inside of him whispered to him that it wasn't the first time he'd killed while blacked out.

* * *

He didn't encounter more men until long after the storm had passed and the snows began to melt, though spring, he was certain, was still a distant spot on the horizon. Since he'd killed the others, though, there had been eyes on him, an ever present reminder of his dwindling sanity, the eyes on him noticeably there, but not so much so that he wasn't certain he wasn't just going crazy and imagining it.

But men did come for him again, eventually. He was lucid when they came, huddled against a wall on a busy street, begging. He spotted them in the crowd, heading his way, their movements a sharp contrast to the steady shuffle of those in the crowd heading about their days.

At once he scooped what little money he'd gotten into his pockets and took off down the alley behind him, looking for the best way to lose them. They would surely kill him this time, he thought, though he couldn't say if that thought came from a place of sanity or not.

He knew the city better than them, so long had he lived in the streets there, and so he took to the rooftops, thinking it the best way to outrun them. He was thin and lithe and he moved with a grace they couldn't quite match as he scurried from building to building, making leaps that would make an ordinary man nervous.

But he discovered quickly they were not ordinary men and they persisted after him, though with more hesitation in their jumps than he had. He was weaker, though, hungry and cold, body numb from sitting so long on the curb clutching a small tin can for money. His fingers rebelled against him as he moved and eventually he came to a jump he couldn't quite make, frozen fingers reaching and failing to find purchase on the ledge as he fell.

He landed hard on his back in a melting snowbank, the breath leaving him and he lay there gasping and choking, struggling to make his lungs work again. His attempts were in vain, though, as the men pursuing him landed gently in the snow beside him, blades drawn. Behind them, a woman dressed in similar attire dropped down as well. He hadn't noticed her before.

She stopped to stand above him, looking down at him with sharp features. She was familiar in a way he couldn't place and, as breath finally returned to him, he struggled to scramble away from her. The two men on either side of her raised their weapons in warning but she waved them down, stepping closer.

"Who are you," she asked, though something in her tone told him she knew the answer to that question already.

He coughed, searching for the words to say. "I don't know" he rasped, his throat raw from disuse, his mouth struggling to shape the words after so long. His own voice was foreign to him and he cringed at the sound of it.

The woman gestured and one of the men approached with his blade, pressing it to his throat. His breath shuddered in his chest and he froze where he lay save for the steady tremble running through him.

"I don't— I don't _know_ —" he said again, but he searched his mind frantically, trying to think of something, anything, to satisfy her question. "I— _Robin_ ," he said at last. "Robin! Please, don't—"

The blade fell from his neck and the woman smiled, eyes suddenly soft where before they had been steely and cold. Breathing out a deep breath, he relaxed ever so slightly, sinking back into the snow, thankful for the cold when faced with looming death.

"Hello, Robin," she said.

His relief lasted only a second. The man closest to him, the one who had threatened him with his blade, stepped forward and with a quick, solid motion, slammed the butt of his sword into his head and the world faded quickly to black.

* * *

He came to on a cold, damp floor, arms shackled behind his back. He was groggy and tired and cold as ever, but he was inside, surrounded on almost all sides by tall, stone walls. On one side was a set of bars, running floor to ceiling and he realized with some confusion that he was in a sort of dungeon.

He shuffled awkwardly, pulling himself upright and against the nearest wall and he heaved out a sigh, thumping his head back against it in resignation.

From the front of the cell came movement and he cast his gaze in that direction to see the woman from before stepping in, accompanied by another man dressed head to toe in black. The man knelt down next to him, unshackling him, and he rubbed at his newly free wrists, which he noticed were caked in blood and wounds from having fought the shackles, at some point. When, he couldn't say, as he had no memory of it.

The woman offered a hand to him and, with some trepidation, he took it and allowed her to help him to his feet.

"My name is Talia Al Ghul," she told him, gesturing for him to follow her. He obeyed quietly, wondering if he was being led to his death. Maybe this was better, he would die here and not out on the streets, starving and alone. Maybe that was something.

She led him down long and winding hallways, all built of the same stone as the cell he'd woken in. The place felt ancient more than it did old, the stone mortared together with thick, crude lines that surely predated history.

Eventually she stopped at a door and led him inside to a small but nicely furnished bedroom. It reeked of the same ancientness as the rest of the building but he didn't question the elegance in it.

"This is your room," she told him, sweeping a curtain of brown hair back from her face. "On the bed are clean clothes in your size and through that door over there," she pointed to a door in the corner, "is a bathroom for you to clean up in."

He nodded numbly, looking around in a daze.

"Go. Clean up, rest. I'll return shortly with food. And answers." She met his eyes with her own sharp gaze. "I'm sure you have a lot of questions."

Again, he nodded numbly. He was still nodding when she left, closing the door behind her, and he stood there, staring around the room.

The bed was soft, so soft as to border on uncomfortable to him after so long sleeping on a pile of rags and cardboard. He ran his filthy hands over the delicately embroidered quilt for just a moment before heading to the bathroom. He left the clothes in their neat pile on the end.

It was as ornate as the rest of the room, and modern, with running water and an enclosed shower. A delicately carved mirror hung above the sink and he looked at himself in it, taking in his appearance for the first time as a whole instead of many fragmented pieces from the mirror shard he'd used to look at himself before.

He was gaunter, now, face pale beneath the dirt, enough to border on sickly. And he felt as bad as as he looked, as hungry as he looked, as _tired_ as he looked. He undressed awkwardly, taking in his sharp collar bones and protruding ribs. He let his gaze linger for only a moment before finally stepping into the shower.

The first spray of warm water burned against his cold skin and he grit his teeth and endured. It was different, to feel so much warmth after so long of constant coldness and his body protested, his skin too sensitive to the heat.

He adjusted after a time, though, and he lingered under the spray, scrubbing from his body every bit of filth he'd accumulated, scrubbing until his skin was raw and pink from the heat and the force of it. His hair was a lost cause, even as he scrubbed soap into his scalp. The tangles were untameable and he settled, instead, for letting the water run over his head and face until the it finally ran clear.

He felt like a new person when he stepped out and toweled himself dry. His appearance alarmed him a great deal less and he took the time, finally, to look over himself in the mirror. He ran his hand over his sharp cheekbones and down, over the now noticeable and patchy stubble on his chin.

He was young, in his mid to late teens at least and his skin was pale, offsetting the sharpness of his features, though he could not quite say if they were sharp from how thin he was or if his jaw line naturally fell the way it did.

There was a smattering of bruises across his chest and around the side of his ribcage, blossoming dark and angry across the pale expanse of his chest. He wondered when he got it and the thought drove his eyes down to his wrists, which were encircled in their own colorful bruises and scabbed over sores. He rubbed at them and looked away, unsure how to feel about such vivid proof of the time he was losing to his blackouts.

The clothes waiting for him on the bed were black and in the same style as those of the warriors he saw accompanying the woman. Talia, he reminded himself, as he pulled them on. Her name was Talia.

They fit comfortably, better than the ones he'd stolen had fit, but even so the top hung awkwardly where it belted around his waist with so much excess material. When he was done he sat down on the bed and waited, unsure of what to do with himself.

He didn't have to wait long. Talia returned only moments later, bearing a tray of food.

"You look quite refreshed," she told him with a small smile, looking him over. She set the tray down on the table next to his bed and pulled up a chair, taking a seat. She nodded her head towards it. "Eat." She had a way about her that made everything she said become a command just by the nature of her presence and he nodded in obedience, casting his eyes over the tray.

There was a large bowl of broth with steam rising hot above it, and beside it sat a plate of buttered bread. To the side was a cup of what could only be tea with its own trickle of steam wafting off of it. He reached for the bowl first, his stomach growling audibly. He tried not to hide his disappointment at such a simple, small meal but she must have noticed anyway because she said, "This is what your stomach can handle now. As your strength returns you will be given more food," and he looked away from her guiltily as he started shoveling the food into his mouth.

She paid his rudeness no mind, instead reaching out to pick up the teacup and the spoon accompanying it. She waited for him to finish, slowly stirring the tea with the spoon as if it were the only thing interesting in the room. He appreciated the small bit of privacy that act offered him as he slurped down the soup, as embarrassed at his poor manners as he was hungry, but the hunger won out.

After a bit, he set aside the now empty bowl, his stomach protesting at being so filled with its contents that he didn't immediately reach for the bread. Instead he settled onto the bed, hands folded in his lap.

"I apologize for the way you awoke," she began, setting aside the cup. "But you attacked several of my men the first few times you came to. It seemed appropriate given the circumstances."

He nodded and pointedly did not look at his wrists. "Where am I?" he asked instead, his voice cracking with almost every word.

"You're in one of the several headquarters for the League of Shadows. We are currently in the mountains of Southeast Asia. I am in charge here and the warriors you see answer to me." She perhaps sensed his growing trepidation with every word she spoke because, after a pause, she continued. "You are in no danger here and this room is yours should you choose to stay."

He looked around, not for the last time, taking it all in. The ancient stone walls, the comfortable bed, the black garb he'd been given, and Talia, imposing and quietly powerful. "At what cost," he asked at last.

She smiled tight though her eyes seemed to hold a bit of pride at his question. "There is a cost, yes," she told him. "But that will come, should you choose to stay here after our conversation."

He thought of the men of hers he'd killed, of how much trouble they must have gone through to track him down and he thought, as well, of the life he'd been living before it. Everything had a cost.

"You don't remember who you are," Talia said and he nodded though it was not a question. "What is your earliest memory?"

"Green waters," he answered without a moment's hesitation. "And men, like the ones you have here, attacking me."

"The Lazarus Pit," she explained. "It has restorative powers, the ability to heal any wounds, to—"

"To restore the dead to life," he finished, dropping his gaze down to his hands. They were trembling, his whole body was, frightened to admit it aloud, after all he'd gone through. "I was dead."

She nodded. "You remember?"

He shook his head, looking up at her. "I just _know_. I can feel it, like every fiber of my being is protesting the life I have, like—" She raised her hand to stop him and he stopped, biting his lip.

"You were returned to life by my father, Ra's Al Ghul, head of the League of Shadows," Talia told him. "He played no small part in your death and sought to ease his own guilt by bringing you back. But the Pit is not to be used lightly and it tainted you, pushed life back into a body that had not had life in too long. You are broken, your mind rejecting your very existence." She sought his eyes out with her own.

He shook his head fervently. He didn't care about that so much, he'd grown accustomed to blank spots in his memory, brought about by his fractured mind. But— "Who am I?" he asked. "Who— Who was I before? Before this." He gestured to himself, to his malnourished, thin frame. "My body doesn't want to be here, my mind is, is—" He paused, meeting her eyes. "What is wrong with me, what is—"

"Bloodlust," she said, her eyes still locked with his. "Brought on by the ill effects of the Lazarus Pit. You seek to kill your murderer and so you seek out and attack those who resemble him in your eyes."

He squeezed his eyes closed, more to block her steady gaze than anything, pushing down the rising memory of a man laughing loud on the corner while he prowled around behind him. "I've been killing people," he murmured quietly. "When I've been blacking out, I've been—"

"Yes," she confirmed.

He looked back to her. "How many people, how many times—"

"Often enough," she told him. "If you don't kill your body betrays you and your mind breaks, the bloodlust taking over. You'll die if you don't keep killing, eventually. You will lose all that is left of your sanity."

He curled his legs to his chest, eyes wide. "I should be dead," he said aloud. "I should be dead." The words seemed to take hold of him and he repeated it over and over again as if in a trance, growing louder with every word until he was screaming it. "I should be dead!"

Talia moved before he could react, catching him by his collar. She turned him to face her and slapped him hard across the face, enough that the words died on his tongue and he sat there, stunned.

"And yet you're alive," she snapped, returning to her own seat. "Death is easy enough to come by but you've been on the edge of death since your escape from my father and yet you've survived. You're a fighter and you're not without salvation. I've brought you here to help you, not condemn you as my father would have done."

He looked at her, still stunned, his cheek stinging. "Why?" he asked, his voice little more than a croak, now, his body still a shaking mess, his entire being on edge.

"Because like my father, I too played too big a role in your death and I wish to make amends for it," she told him, her tone suddenly soft. "You were in the care of someone I care dearly for and I wish to correct the wrongs I've committed against him."

"But not for my sake," he said softy.

She ignored him. "You were Richard Grayson before your death," she began, "Ward to billionaire Bruce Wayne of Gotham City. Bruce Wayne is a vigilante known as Batman, by night, and you were his sidekick."

"Robin," he echoed aloud and she nodded.

"You were Robin and you were a hero, though young and reckless. Your death came at the hands of one of Batman's greatest foes, a monster by the name of the Joker. My father set him upon you both to distract you from a campaign of terrorism he was bringing about. It worked. He captured you and beat you near to death before leaving you to die in the explosions my father had planted." She looked him over, watching his reaction, but he had none. He stared blankly at her, numb to and overwhelmed by the information she was giving him. "Your death at his hands was not part of the plan."

He sat there, his shaking beyond his control, words escaping him. "Calm yourself," she commanded, and he swallowed the ball of rage rising to the surface, taking slow, deep breaths.

"What will you do with me here?" he asked after a long while had passed and he had finally calmed himself. "Can you fix me?"

She nodded and reached for the tea she had abandoned before. "This tea is brewed with an ancient flower that blooms only once every hundred years. It has the power to undo what the Lazarus Pit has done." She held it out to him and he took it, staring down at the light green liquid. "If you drink it, it will ease your mind and bring back some of who you were. The bloodlust will subside, but it comes at a cost." _Everything comes at a cost_. "It will undo the work of the Lazarus Pit on your body, as well. It will not kill you but it will return to you the pain of your death. I can not say if that pain will linger. And you will remember."

He didn't dare ask her what he would remember and instead looked down at the liquid, tilting the cup slowly so that the tea moved about and rippled. "And what if I don't want it?" he asked.

She laughed and it was a startling sound from her, light and delicate. It set him on edge, forcing the rage closer to the surface but he held it back, continuing his slow pattern of breathing, his slow movement of the cup in his hands. "Then I will have killed a lot of people to get that flower for nothing," she informed him and he felt a lump form in his throat. "But do not let it dissuade you," she continued. "This choice is yours and yours alone to make."

"And after?" he asked, looking back up at her. "Will you let me leave?"

"After— Afterwards, you are free to go if you so choose. My men will take you to where we found you and you can continue on your own."

"Or?"

She smiled wide. "Or you can stay here and work in service to me. I will train you in the ways of the League and work you in the ways of the League and, when you're ready, I will help you to return back to Gotham."

"Is there anyone waiting for me there?" he asked, gripping the cup tighter in both hands.

She shook her head. "Everyone you knew believes you dead."

He brought the cup to his lips but stopped at the last moment, taking in the sickly sweet smell. "What do you want for me?" he asked.

"I want for you to do what you want to do," she told him, standing. "I will return later to check on you. Drink that slowly. I can not undo what it will do to you."

She left, letting the door click closed behind her and he watched it close, wishing the choice were made for him, wishing she had told him nothing and more at the same time and, in some small part of him, he wished she'd left him where he was to eventually die, cold and hungry on the streets.

In the end, he drank the tea.


	2. Chapter 2

The first sip did nothing for too long, so long that he was midway through his fourth sip by the time it hit him. The pain nearly sent the cup flying from his hands, so strong was the spasm it sent through him. But he gripped it tight, breath catching in his throat.

Was the suffering he'd been through already worth this suffering? He couldn't say, but he drank more slowly, bringing the cup to his lip with trembling hands. It was a struggle, the further he got, the pain fighting him with every movement and breathing became a more laborious task with each passing second until he was gasping, gulping down air that was only barely coming to him every other moment.

Eventually, black spots began to tinge the periphery of his vision, creeping further and further into his line of sight proper but at last the cup was empty and he let it fall aside, clutching at his chest. The pain was overwhelming, enough that tears came to his eyes and he fell over onto his side in the bed, curling up tight, willing it away. Every breath became a fire in his lungs and every movement set his skin to itching and burning so he lay still, drawing breath only as needed, squeezing his eyes tight against the pain.

He lost consciousness after a time, maybe from the pain or maybe from lack of oxygen, but whatever the reason darkness overcame him and he came to some time later, shaking and hot, _too_ hot, his body soaked to the bone with sweat.

Talia's face loomed in the white fuzz of his vision and he blinked up at her as she mopped at his soaked forehead, whispering something that might have been soothing, he wasn't sure. He couldn't make out her words, only that her lips were moving in a rhythm that reminded him of his pounding heart, and he reached out to to her only for his arm to fall back to the bed halfway through the motion, his body sapped of strength.

"I'm dying," he rasped out, fingers twitching from the attempt. It sent a fresh wave of pain through him, up his arm and to his very core, burning like the flame in his lungs, as the pain had done before he had passed out. Only now his body was aflame, where for so long it had been cold to the bone, and he wished, now, for the freezing temperatures and the hunger that had been there before, anything but the feeling of burning alive.

Talia made a noise that might have been a _tsk_ and shook her head. "—not dying," he read from the movement of her lips. "It will pass."

"No," he gasped out and she reached out and took one of his hands, her other against his forehead, pressing a damp cloth to it. He wanted to scream at her because it was she that had done this to him but the strength wouldn't come to him so he lay there, staring up at her, begging silently for the death he was hoping would come. And at times he screamed until his throat was raw, thrashing from the pain as the strength came to him to do so.

Time passed in waves he couldn't track, though it was hardly a new feeling. And the memories came to him, too, slowly at first and then all at once, in fits and bouts, as dreams would during sleep.

He remembered, first, his parents, lying dead at his feet and then Bruce, tall and imposing, ushering him through the door to a house bigger than any he'd seen before in his life. And he remembered _Batman_ , running with him from rooftop to rooftop.

And he remembered his team. Megan, green skinned with too big smiles. Artemis, with her sharp looks and blond hair. Wally, with a smattering of freckles and tousled red hair. Connor, all angry looks and Kaldur, with his quiet power.

He remembered running off on his own to chase down a lead and getting captured by the Joker. And he remembered every agonizing moment of his death, relived it again and again and again across hours, _days_ , he wasn't sure how long.

And he remembered killing, everybody he'd torn open during his blackouts, every unfortunate soul who had laughed near him too loudly, too out of control. Every man with high angled cheekbones and a too big smile who he'd slaughtered like nothing. Women with bright lipstick and pale faces who'd he'd attacked in alleyways.

Eventually he came to, opening his eyes to the soft flickering glow of candlelight dancing from the nearby table. He didn't move for a long while, just staring up at the ceiling, terrified the pain would return to him with the smallest movement. But eventually he had to stir and when he did, the pain did come, but it was minimal, more than tolerable in the wake of the agony he'd just suffered. And his breath, still, set his lungs burning, but again, it was so much less so than before that he found himself thankful for it as he finally pushed himself upright.

The world seemed to spin around him as he reoriented himself, dizziness overcoming him. He fought back the urge to vomit, willing the nausea away as best he could. And he sat there, combing through his own mind, _remembering_ until the memories turned bloody and sent him scrambling for the bathroom.

He stood there awhile, holding himself upright with clammy hands against the porcelain sink, heaving up what little he had in his stomach and then dry heaving when nothing else would come up.

He had killed so many people, he had hurt so many others.

From the doorway there was movement and he looked up just as Talia appeared.

"You remember," was all she said as she pushed a glass of water into his shaking hands. He drank it down fast, though it did little for the lingering taste of vomit in his mouth. He pushed it back into her waiting hand, panting and gasping from how weak he felt, from the energy it took to stand. "The shock will pass soon enough."

She stepped aside to let him pass and he hobbled back to the bed, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Talia again took a seat in the chair nearby, silent and patient.

In his life before, as he remembered it now, he had met her only once or twice before, at Wayne Manor. She had loved Bruce, perhaps still did, given her earlier words, and had on more than one occasion found her way into the man's home and into his bed, though Dick never reflected on it too much.

Now, though, she was different, imposing and powerful where before she had been all beauty and elegance. Gone was the fancy dress he had once associated with her and in its place was the traditional League of Shadows garb, weapons strapped about it.

"I remember," he said, but it was for himself and not her, a way to root the memories to reality, fearful suddenly that they may slip away, though equally hopeful in light of the worst memories. "I've killed people." He reached a trembling hand up to push his sweat damp hair from his face, scrubbing at his eyes.

Talia nodded. "You have," she confirmed. She reached to the table next to her and picked up the tray of food there that he hadn't noticed before. She passed it over to him and he didn't protest as she set it onto his lap. "You should eat, you need to regain your strength."

Again it was a bowl of broth and bread but he couldn't bring himself to complain as he started on it, hands barely strong enough to lift the bowl to his mouth. All the while she sat and watched him as a mother looking after her child would and he tried not to let it unnerve him, though it did anyway with the knowledge of who she really was.

He turned everything over in his mind as he ate, his life, his death, his life _after._ His life before came to him as if through a sieve, distant and difficult to connect to. The memories were there and he knew he had lived them but there was a disconnect from those memories, as if he merely _knew_ that they had happened rather than having actually lived them, as if viewing them all through a foggy window. But the memories _after_ came crisper and cleaner.

"How is your pain?" she asked him after a while and he jumped, spoon rattling against the bowl.

"There," he told her, and it was the truth, though with everything else it was so minor he had almost forgotten it. "But not bad." He shrugged and it felt more normal than anything had in years. "I've had worse," he added dryly.

She smiled. "And your memories?"

He looked over at her darkly, a queasy feeling coming over him once more. "There as well, but—" he paused, searching for the words. "Far away?" he tried and she hmmed.

"You're dissociating," she explained, and he nodded because it sounded right. "It too will pass with the shock."

He nodded again for the sake of the movement and finished off his broth before casting the bowl aside and tearing into the bread. It was dry and horrible, more so now with the memory of what actual food tasted like. He longed for steak, for eggs, for Alfred's baking, or even the burnt crisps Megan called cookies. But the bread was something for his stomach and he ate it, grateful for the food.

"How long has it been?" Dick asked, at last. "How long was I—"

"A year and a half," she told him softly and he almost choked on the piece of bread he'd just shoved into his mouth. He swallowed it down and frowned, doing the math in his head.

"I would be 17?" he ventured. "I _am_ 17," he amended. For a year and a half he'd been on the streets hurting and hungry and losing himself more and more by the day. He felt sick all over again, but swallowed the feeling down successfully this time.

"Yes." Talia stood and took the now empty tray from his lap. "Is there anything else I can get you?

He looked at the tray. "More food?" he suggested and she smirked, shaking her head.

"Not yet. Your stomach can't handle it. I will have one of my men bring you more water, however, and there will be a bigger meal in the morning." She turned and headed for the door, her shoes clicking loud on the stone floor.

"Wait," he called after her and she paused, turning to look at him. "What will happen to me now? If I choose to stay?" He turned their earlier conversation around in his head. "If I stay, will I have to kill for you, for the League?"

"Yes," she said simply. "You have a few days to decide. I'll return when you have your answer." And with that she left the room, leaving him to eerie silence and the sound of his heart pounding in his ears.

He slept fitfully that night, nightmares coming to him the entire time. But when he woke there was a warm bowl of oatmeal and fruit waiting for him, which he devoured far too quickly.

* * *

He realized after a long while of boredom that he was able to leave his room and he did so, heading out to wander the halls. He found training rooms almost immediately, with rows of weapons and weights. He picked up a thin blade that looked his size and his hands trembled with the weight of it and the strength required to keep a solid grip.

It was disheartening, from where he had once been. He was no longer strong or flexible or skilled. He doubted he could hold his own in a fight and he returned the sword to its spot, turning to leave.

If he stayed, Talia would train him, but she would have him kill, as he had before. But if he left, he had no way to return home, no one to return to. No one would be there waiting for him and he would have to explain to them all the things he'd done to survive, he would have to make sense of it all to them and he couldn't stomach the thought anymore than he could stomach killing for Talia.

And they had grieved for him, no doubt, had come full circle back to some sense of normalcy in the wake of his death, as he had done with his own parents death, and going back would ruin that, would rehash the pain all over again. Everyone had moved on, no doubt, and he was here, now, a killer and a survivor and _alive_ against all odds, and this life had been granted to him for a reason.

And the League, however wrong they were in their ways, didn't kill for killing's sake. The killed to restore a warped sense of balance they saw falling apart in the world. They killed politicians, lawyers, high profile figures with questionable morals and hidden agendas.

He couldn't decide if it would be easier to live with than returning to the life he'd been living, on the streets.

Talia came to him the following day and he knew she knew his answer the moment she laid eyes on him. "You will stay," she said, and he nodded.

"I'll stay."

* * *

He swore his oath to the League the following week, when his strength had returned and he could finally leave his bed for more than just a few hours at a time.

Talia herself preceded over the ceremony and the warriors of the fortress all lined up to attend, hundreds of them filling the room. She recited the oath to him in its original ancient arabic and then, again, in english, and he recited it back to her, line by line until it was complete.

"Kneel," she commanded and he did so, his body protesting the movement. "You are reborn in the name of the League," she said at long last, brushing cool knuckles across his forehead. "Choose a name."

"Robin," he said, and it was fitting to be reborn as such, after dying in that name. He was more Robin than he had ever been before, his previous life resigned to distant, foggy memories, even after the shock had worn off.

"Robin," she announced to the hall of people and she bid him rise with a gesture."You are henceforth sworn to the League of Shadows, until such a time as your death takes you from us or you are relinquished of your duties."

He rose to applause.

* * *

His training began right away. Sometimes it was with Talia, one on one, and at other times it was with the other members. Most of the training was familiar and yet a struggle all the same, weak as he was, but after a few months he began to fill out in weight and in muscle, growing into his body at last. His strength returned little by little until he was near or at a place he once may have been, only more so, older and more experienced now.

His appearance certainly changed with time, as well, his hair finally healthy and soft, growing longer and longer until he at last began to cut it again. And his once gaunt face was now rugged and he resembled his father more and more by the day, his jaw line growing more defined, his cheeks filling in.

"You're becoming quite handsome," Talia commented once during their training, while she had him backed to a wall with her weapon. He flushed and in his distraction she sent him crashing to the ground. She laughed, loud and high. "You'll be a fine warrior yet."

Months went by and, at some point, his birthday came and went. Day by day he became better and faster in his training until Talia finally came to him and held a manilla folder out to him.

"Your first assignment," she explained as he opened it. "You're ready."

He nodded, throat tight, looking over his target, an angry looking Chinese man.

"Can you do it?" she asked after a moment and again he nodded.

"I'm ready."

* * *

The mark was easy enough. The man was a monster, from everything he'd read in the file, who preyed on others using the power he'd acquired in government. A sick pervert rapist, whose power granted him immunity to the repercussions of his actions.

Robin killed him in his sleep, as per the instructions. 'Make it quiet and fast' he'd been told, and so he suffocated him before the man even had time to react, and he was almost sickened at what little remorse he had after the fact.

Some people deserved to die, he thought as he pulled the blankets over the body, covering it.

And still, somehow it got easier from there, even with less justification.

* * *

As time went on, Robin thought less and less about his life before, so drowned out was it by the life after. But the pain from his death, brought about by the tea Talia had given him, never really went away. His skin always felt tight, as if it were burning, and every breath was a new, steady pain filling his chest. He ached in other ways, as well, that were difficult to describe. He suffered migraines and ringing in his ears, though that came and went more often.

"Meditation will help," Talia told him, as if it were just that easy to will the pain away. "It _is_ ," she had argued, "If you know how."

She had him sit for hours every week, sometimes daily, meditating, a task that came with some difficulty. The pain was a distraction that took a backseat to his constantly wandering mind, and he spent more of the time fidgeting than meditating.

Talia joined him on occasion, _tsk_ ing him where needed, poking and prodding him into proper form and posture. And eventually he got the hang of it, learned to quickly tune it out everything around him such that he could sit in the middle of the loud mess hall, where he and the warriors took their meals, and not hear a sound other than what he _wanted_ to hear.

And she was right, it helped with the pain, enough that it bothered him less when it mattered, though with only minor difference in the times between. But it was something.

And Talia beamed at him, after, as she always did, silent at his achievements but proud all the same.

She reminded him of Bruce, in that way. Never quick to praise aloud but always quietly satisfied, nonetheless.

* * *

Despite what Talia had told him, his dissociation with his past memories never really went away. He always thought of them like watching another version of himself in the mirror, going about a life he had merely dreamed had happened.

A strange version of deja vu came across him often. Something would remind him of that time in his life but it might be days before the connection was made. Certain people, certain events. A blonde woman in his bed who he only realized later reminded him of Artemis, which set him flushing anew. A spot of red hair in a sea of black while moving across rooftops to his next assignment.

Wally, his best friend, once upon a time.

And Talia herself a reflection of Bruce at all times, motherly in the same way as he had been fatherly.

And though he thought of his old life less and less, the reminders became moreso, until he found building within himself a nostalgia that this life couldn't quite quench.

And he dreamed too often of that old life, but more often of his death. Night after night was spent tossing and turning, his skin near feverish.

"You talk in your sleep," the blonde from before told him, the one who reminded him of Artemis. Sara was her given name, she had admitted to him once, but her new name always lost itself on his lips the moment he went to say it. In any case she'd found herself with the League after the death of her family in a fire, and she'd cast that old life away.

She lay stretched out next to him, naked, her legs entwined with his as he woke. He yawned and stretched out as well, turning to look her over. "Really?" he said playfully, plastering a tired smile across his face. He didn't feel it though. His skin was flush with the typical pain, his lungs burning, the lingering blood of his nightmares still tasting copper in his mouth.

"Sad things, yeah," she said after a bit, pulling herself to her feet and reaching for her clothes. "You cry out a lot, as if you were dying."

He let the smile fall from his face and she stared down at him with sad, hazel eyes. "It's alright," she said as she pulled her top on. "We all have our demons to bear. That's why we're here."

Except he didn't want to be there anymore.

* * *

Eventually the assignments became easier until killing his mark became nothing more than another tiresome chore. Gone was any need for justification, any hint of guilt or remorse, and he no longer questioned his orders.

The time between was spent training harder and harder until even Talia herself seemed to cast worried glances his way. But she never spoke up and so he didn't stop and when he asked for more assignments she handed them over to him wordlessly.

Until the day she refused him, her sharp eyes on him, making him feel small beneath her gaze despite the height he had now had over her.

"I have no assignments for you," she said, gesturing for him to follow her. He did as he was commanded, falling into step with her. She led him down a hall he'd never dared wander down, as avoided as it was by all the others, and she came to a door.

Inside was an ornate bedroom that could only be hers, decorated in all of the aesthetic she reeked of: deep reds and golds, all of the furniture complete with ornate and carved fixtures. He hesitated to follow her in but she nodded her assent and so he did, allowing her to close the door behind him.

He shifted uncomfortably in the chair offered to him and she herself sat on the bed. It was a mirror image, in a way, of his first time waking to her presence and he tried not to read too hard into her intentions for bringing him there.

"Your nightmares are getting worse," she commented and Robin looked away from her.

"How did you know about my nightmares?"

"I know everything that goes on here," she told him and the way she said it made him flush and think of the revolving door of people he'd had into his bed. And now he sat beside hers, awkward all the same.

She regarded him for but a moment before standing and walking across the room to a cabinet against the wall. She pulled from it a thick file, similar to the ones given to him for his assignments. She handed it to him as she retook her seat.

"You've now been here more than two years," she told him as he looked down at the file. "Open it."

Robin opened it and inside was his own picture, taken as an ID photo might be taken. It looked almost stock, taken for the many fake identities that were crafted for him to go about his assignments. Behind it were an assortment of papers and documents. A passport, a license registered to Gotham City, a social security card, a birth certificate, debit and credit cards., even resumes.

All issued under a false name: Robin Gray.

This was different than the other identities, this was _thorough_ and complete.

He stared down at it, numb. "This is—"

"A new identity," she explained, "For your return to the states. It's everything you should need to start over, should you so choose when you get there."

This was it, the decision being made for him, as he had begged her to make it for him so many years earlier.

"It's time. I am releasing you from your oath to the League," she said.

He nodded but didn't say anything, words escaping him. He wanted to thank her and to refuse her in equal parts, but this was the decision, spread out in his hands. He was going home.

"The time may come where I may need to call on you once more, however," she began and he lifted his gaze from the folder to meet her eyes. "My father is a tyrant and a monster and his reign will soon fall at my hands. When the time is right."

The information settled over him heavy and he blinked, the pieces coming together. "We serve you," he echoed. "We answer to _you_."

She nodded. "I've spent a long time building my army from within. Everyone here, they are not my father's. The time may not come for years, but when it comes, I will need you. The League of Shadows will be mine, in time."

"I— I understand," he said. "This is the cost." _Everything has a cost_.

"Yes."


	3. Chapter 3

Gotham was the same as it had always been in his memories, imposing and violent and dirty.

He stayed all of a few day before the worry of running into someone he knew, running into _Bruce_ , drove him out.

Bludhaven was the sister city of Gotham, about an hour east, situated in the middle of a bay across an interconnected chain of islands. A former whaling town left disparate when the industry fell through, it was as corrupt and broken as Gotham was, but where Gotham had hope and money, Bludhaven was nothing more than the place where dreams went to die.

It seemed fitting a place as any to settle down in.

To its north was a renowned University, the one shining beacon of change in the otherwise dark hell called Bludhaven, and to the south and west were suburbs that sprawled until they intertwined with those from Gotham, joining the two cities in a way that blurred county lines.

The city reminded him of the cities had had been in during his time on the streets and returning to such a place proved to be a type of catharsis to him, a way to reclaim that lost time.

It was perfect, the kind of place where he could envision a future of perhaps making a difference or, at the very least, getting by well off enough. The city was challenged for skilled workers, left under funded and under worked by those migrating to Gotham. He could make a good life here.

With the considerable funds left to him by Talia as payment for his service to the League, he was able to secure an apartment: a large studio in the heart of downtown. No one wanted to live in the neighborhood he'd set his sights on, one of the more dangerous, but quaint and homey all the same, so market prices were down and he soon found himself standing in a near thousand square foot studio, looking around at his new home. It was a _steal_. The landlord had looked almost relieved looking over his application and background papers.

He had money enough to get him by for a few months, but he sought out a job right away.

The requirements for the police academy were low with the most likely applicants being many of those whose lives were already hardpressed by the rough streets of the city, and so he was accepted near immediately and finished soon enough.

Being a beat cop was hardly his life's aspiration but it paid the bills and he liked it well enough and relished in the opportunity it gave him to quickly learn the city and provide help to those in the most need, where he could.

Most times, though, he was on traffic assignments, but still, it was a living.

* * *

It wasn't long before the call of helping the city drew him back into costume.

He had free time. Too much of it. With no friends in the city, with few hobbies and long shifts condensed across fewer days, a side effect of being an officer of the law, he found himself idle and anxious and missing the life he'd had with the League, with days filled with strict training regimens and deep cover assignments across the farthest corners of the globe.

With the return to a life that could almost be considered normal, Robin found himself more and more reminded of his life _before_ , of when he was Robin, a costumed hero, and not just Robin the assassin turned beat cop with too much free time eating away at him.

He remembered being that Robin and all the adrenaline and excitement it brought with it and he longed for a return to that time.

It was the thought of his friends now, though, after so much time since his death, that stayed him from showing up at Bruce Wayne's Manor and confessing the truth to him. He couldn't go back, ever, though every bit of him ached to.

But he longed for something more, all the same. A darker part of him said he missed hurting people, missed beating justice into those who most deserved it, and maybe that darker part was the truest.

He made his own costume, modeled it from a concept he had once put together when he was still _Robin_ and all too aware that he couldn't be Robin forever, that at some point he had to transcend that role and become his own hero, whose name was said without accompaniment to someone else's.

He had called it _Nightwing_ , had scribbled costume concepts and weapon designs in notebooks. Something different from the flashiness of his Robin costume, something darker and more mature.

He settled on black with a single blue accent: a bird across the front, drawn in a V pattern, reminiscent of the way birds flocked together through the sky. It was a throwback to the suits he had worn as a member of the Flying Graysons, though that life felt so far away from him now. In most other ways, it resembled his League suit, with armor built into the key areas, strategic pockets, a utility belt to give Batman a run for his money.

In the end it looked almost as he had envisioned, a tactical suit with just enough changed to make it _his_ , but a far enough cry from the League outfits that it didn't immediately reek of _assassin_.

He spent the longest time deciding on the face, but eventually he settled on the same style eye mask that he had worn as Robin, with a much sharper accent to it, a little more complex. It was enough. Wearing it, his appearance was generic enough he could not be immediately recognized as someone supposed to be long dead.

Still, he wasn't certain he could stand up to the scrutiny of Batman, but with any luck the risk would never come to fruition. He had no intention of working with other heros and loners were notoriously unfriendly enough that the Justice League only rarely reached out to them.

For his weapon, he chose a set of eskrima clubs that could be formed to make a longer staff. It was a throwback to his swordsmanship, which Talia had spent grueling months instructing him in until the thought of shooting people dead with a gun seemed much more preferable. But it was as much a familiarity to his day job, as well, to the nightstick he carried at all times, and he practiced with the clubs for weeks before he finally decided on them.

He would have prefered a sword, but he daren't risk the unholy hell that would be rained down on him by the Justice League should he start slaughtering people in the streets. Besides, it wasn't really him, deep down inside.

He decided he was done killing people.

* * *

He'd heard whispers of another vigilante in town among his colleagues at work, though the general consensus was that she was small time and little worry among the force, despite the alarming trail of violence she left in her wake. With a city so big and her as the only vigilante, she made little enough trouble for the police and the local government that no move was made to approach her, for better or for worse.

Sportress was her name, and Robin hardly expected to run into her only a few short weeks into his stint as Nightwing.

She found him in the early morning hours, as he sat at his favorite vantage point on a roof, looking down at the streets below. It was a quiet night and he was in pain, the firebrand pain that set deep in his flesh and drove him to distraction. He was on edge, fire in his lungs, flame burning across his flesh, and so he sat where he could watch but only intervene if necessary.

The city had survived without his presence, and it would survive another night. But he was out in costume all the same, too restless to sleep.

Sportress landed softly enough behind him that he doubted an ordinary person would have heard her. But he was League trained and he didn't so much as flinch as she crept up behind him to stand by his side.

She was blonde with short tousled hair that hung barely passed her chin. Her costume was similar to his own, a dark gray made for its tactical advantage. There were accents of deep green, though, running down the sleeves and across the chest in a spiral where it ran back down to her sides, crossing down the seams of her pants. Her mask covered all but a diamond shape where her mouth and nose were, stopping at her hairline. Tactical goggles had been sewn across the holes for her eyes and he caught a flash of deep brown on the other side of them. She was asian.

Her utility belt held everything imaginable: a collapsible staff similar to his own, knives, several sets of brass knuckles, including the ones currently adorning her hands, which she had settled onto her hips. At one hip hung a crossbow, large and dangerous, though collapsed, and across her back was strapped a quiver.

He wondered if the stories of her violence has been downplayed to him at the precinct. Maybe he needn't have worried so much about killing people.

"You're Nightwing," she stated calmly and her voice sent a chill down his spine. It was rough and low and he'd know it anywhere, so distinctive was it when combined with the blond hair, the style of her costume, the crossbow. Even the name, so similar as it was to her father's.

It was Artemis. He almost choked as she looked down at him, eyes narrowing behind her goggles. "You look familiar. Do I know—" she began, but he cut her off, springing to his feet, though the effort only pained him all the more.

"You're Sportress," he said, deepening his voice ever so slightly. He doubted she would recognize him by that alone. He'd changed far more than she had, he had shot up in height and he towered over her now and his voice was no longer the high pitched cackle it had been at thirteen. He was a man, now, whereas she had been almost a woman already the last time he had seen her. "If you're here because you want to work together, I'm sorry to have to tell you I don't play well with others."

The intimidation act was new to him, despite so long as a mercenary, but he thought he pulled it off well enough. Sportress practically sneered at him, drawing her lips back into an angry frown that didn't quite fit the Artemis he remembered.

"If you don't know what you're doing, you'll get your ass killed in a city like this, working alone," she snapped at him.

"It's a good thing I know what I'm doing," he said, laughing. He lost himself for a moment, so surprised by her boldness, that he found himself slipping into his real laugh, a laugh that he knew she knew was familiar and her eyes widened.

"Are you sure I don't know—" she tried again but he waved her off.

"Never seen you before today," he told her, hopping back onto the ledge. "Now, if you'll excuse me—" He dropped from the ledge abruptly, enough to send her likely running over to look after him, but he didn't follow her movements, instead focusing only on catching the edge of the fire escape just below it, slowing his fall and positioning himself to land perfectly on the ground. The landing was as gentle as he had planned it and he took off the moment his feet hit the ground, heading for a nearby alley he knew for a fact was famous for its near death muggings.

She didn't follow him and he leaned against the wall just out of her sight, heart pounding.

His old life was going to find a way to come back to him, one way or another.

* * *

He looked her up, at last, the next morning. He'd hesitated to look up _anyone_ after his return to the states, worried he'd tempt himself into returning to his old life, worried more they might somehow realize someone had been looking into them.

But social media was prevalent nowadays and it was easy enough to find her facebook profile. She looked nothing as he had remembered, her hair now shorn short and wild, though she wore it back in the majority of her pictures. It was difficult to reconcile her with the vigilante he had seen the night before, with her blood stained brass knuckles and wide range of knives.

She was a graduate student at Bludhaven University, working on her masters.

She was single, which was the most surprising thing he saw. Somehow he had thought she would have stayed with Wally, but they had been young and, at heart, vastly different people, so maybe it wasn't really meant to last.

He wondered if his death had played a role in that.

He closed it out as quickly as he had opened it, determined not to let himself start digging any deeper. What mattered was that she was in the city, after all his attempts to avoid his past, and there was little he could do to truly avoid her, short of uprooting his life again and changing locations.

He couldn't keep running. He would have to find a way to avoid her.

* * *

"Why the sudden interest in Sportress?"

Robin looked up from his office computer, where he was doing his mandatory desk duty shift. He had multiple articles of Sportress sightings pulled up and he didn't bother minimizing them as Mark, one of his precinct's detectives, came up behind him.

He shrugged, scrolling through an article containing only a blurry photo of her. "She's interesting, is all, that we know so little about her."

Mark dropped into the seat next to his desk, usually used to handcuff suspects during processing. Today they were slow, though, and so the seat sat blissfully empty. He took a swig of his coffee, setting it down on the desk. Robin eyed it wearily. It would leave a ring on the wood if left too long, but he kept his mouth shut. It wasn't his desk anyway, it belonged to the department.

"Whatcha want to know about her?" Mark asked, and Robin blinked, looking up to him from the coffee mug. "I worked with a few of the detectives that were looking into her, before the department decided to drop the case. Not really worth the resources, you know what I mean? And a lot of us feel she's doing some much needed good."

Robin frowned, not at all surprised to hear such praise for a violent vigilante in a place like Bludhaven. "Why so little information on her online?" he asked, closing out of the windows. He'd turned up nothing new, as before.

"She's doesn't really work the streets, you know," Mark said. "Sticks to bringing down organizations, big time things on a small time scale, if you get what I'm saying. She targets higher ups, drug lords, corrupt politicians. She doesn't make herself busy much with muggings and petty thefts, not like the Nightwing fellow does."

Robin didn't react at all to the mention of his alter ego. He'd had yet to hit the news, but it seemed his name was making its rounds nonetheless.

"Anyway," Mark continued, "It's hard to catch her in the act of much of anything, since she tends to target the people out of our reach, even. Finds the evidence, leaves them bloody and unconscious by the time we make it to the scene. She's left a few of them dead, even. She really knows that she's doing, that one. Wouldn't be surprised if she'd learned from the Bats himself."

"Huh," Robin said, taking it all in. She was as violent as he'd heard, but he didn't doubt she knew what she was doing. It explained why he'd only ever run into her the once, and then only because she'd sought him out.

Mark stood, grabbing his mug. "Yeah, she's in a league of her own. Doing a better job cleaning up this city than we are, if you ask me."

Somehow Robin doubted she'd been trained by Batman, though, but he couldn't really argue that last point.

* * *

He didn't run into her again until a few months later, when he bumped into Artemis, out of costume, in a coffee shop.

He was waiting for his name to be called, standing near the sugars and creams. He was avoided by everyone, his presence in his cop uniform intimidating to all of those who shuffled by him. But he was preoccupied with his phone, leaning against the wall with ears only for the name he was waiting for.

When they finally announced it he took his coffee without a word and turned sharply, colliding directly with her. His coffee spilled down her blouse and he already had a handful of napkins in his hands, apologizing profusely, by the time he looked up and realized it was _her_.

Artemis stared up at him with wide eyes from behind wire framed glasses, her hair down and tousled, coffee now splattered across her shirt, her scarf, her jacket. She didn't seem to pay it any mind, though, her eyes only on him, locked with his, mouth hanging agape. A fine tremor ran through her and she drew in a sharp breath.

" _Dick_ ," she said carefully, hand clenched around her purse.

He stared back at her in a stupor, internal panic claiming him, half empty cup clutched in one sticky hand, a wad of napkins in the other. "Arte—" He stopped, catching himself. "I— I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—" he trailed off, holding out the napkins to her as he set his own cup down on the counter. She took them with a trembling hand but didn't do anything with him.

"No," she whispered. "No, it's _you_ , it's—"

He turned and bolted before she could finish.

"Wait! Don't— Don't go!" she called after him from the doorway, but he knew the city well, knew it enough to disappear into the crowds of early morning commuters making their way down the street. No one spared him a glance.

He had to leave, he told himself. He had to leave the city.

But he didn't.

This was the decision being made for him. The truth would come out, one way or another.

Days passed and he went about his life with no interference from Artemis, the team, the Justice League: Cop by day, Nightwing by night.

After a week had gone by, he hoped maybe she had let it go. The eyes played tricks on people, grief had a funny way of striking deep into the soul, and surely she would doubt herself before she would believe her old friend was back from the dead.

He had no such luck.

* * *

Barely a week and a half later, one of the silent alarms he kept in his apartment was triggered while he was out on patrol. Robin returned via the front door, but the half ajar window adjoining his fire escape did not go unnoticed by him as a he circled the building to the entrance.

She was there when he opened the door and let himself in. He'd changed from his costume on his way back and he stepped in quietly, duffle bag thrown across his shoulder, his gun held tight in the grip of his hands.

He'd only ever rarely had cause to use it, but better safe than sorry, walking into the unknown in his own apartment as he was. He had no reason to be Nightwing, here, with an intruder. He was just Robin Gray, defending his home.

Artemis was there, in costume, sitting politely on the edge of his bed, scrolling through her phone as if there was not a care in the world. She looked up as he dropped the duffle bag loudly on the floor, no longer concerned with keeping silent at the sight of her.

He stood in the doorway, staring at her with some level of disbelief.

She'd broken into his apartment.

"You have a gun," she commented, surprised.

"I'm a cop," he retorted, setting it down on his kitchen counter as he walked into the room. Hardly the best gun etiquette, but it was just her and him. Hardly seemed worth the trouble. "You triggered the alarm on purpose, to lure me back."

She sniffed as if offended. "I'm hardly an amateur," she said. "If I didn't want you to know I was here, you wouldn't have known I was here." She gave him a cocky smirk, the same one she'd been notorious for when she had just been Artemis to him, so many years earlier.

She reached up and peeled back her mask, tossing it aside. She shook out her hair from where it had been pulled back, letting it settle around her face, fluffy and thick. Then she stood and strode over until she was standing in front of him and all at once she _was_ Artemis again, hardly unchanged now that he could see her without the mask.

He was almost a head taller than her and she had to look up to him to take him all in and she did, a sad look in her eyes as her gaze roamed over his face, finally settling on meeting his eyes.

"It's really you," she said after a long moment had passed. "I didn't dare let myself believe it was true until— until I saw you again with my own eyes." She reached out to him with her hand, placing it against his chest, digging her fingers into the fabric of his shirt.

He reached up himself and caught her hand in his where it lay, intertwining his fingers with hers. "How did you find me?" he asked, a lump forming in his throat.

"You left your cup at the coffee shop," she told him. "Your name was scrawled on it and lucky for me the barista who took your order had neat handwriting. It only took me a little sleuthing to find your address."

She gave him a wry smile and he looked down at her, feeling every bit as overwhelmed as she likely did. "It's really you," she echoed, letting go of his hand and stepping back.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "It's really me."

Her eyes dampened with unshed tears and he himself felt what could have been a few tears of his own coming on, but he quelled it

And then she surprised him. She reached up and wiped from her eyes the coming tears and then she lurched forward on her tip toes, catching his mouth in hers in a kiss, her hand coming up behind his head to bury itself in his hair.

The move caught him by surprise but he leaned into it, returning her kiss in turn and wrapping his arms around her, pulling her against him. It was a smooth motion, familiar in it's comfort and he kissed her harder, dropping one hand down to settle it against her lower back.

He pulled away after a moment and looked down at her and her now flush lips and red tinted face. It felt almost natural, to be kissing her as he had, and he thought of his time at the League and blond haired Sarah, who had reminded him so much of the woman he now had in his arms. But there had been others, too, a long list of lovers, male and female alike, and the thought of adding Artemis to that list suddenly made him hesitate.

Robin reached out and swept a lock of hair from her face and, searching her expression for any sign that she wasn't committed to this, but she was panting and heavy lidded. "Are you s—" he began, but she cut him off.

"Yes, yes," she said, catching his hand in hers and squeezing it tight. Her hands were calloused and rough, as an archer's would be, and he squeezed it in return. "I'm sure, D— Robin. I'm— yeah."

He swallowed, throat dry, and he moved forward, catching her face in his hands and kissing her again, but deeper and far less chaste than before. Her chest heaved against his, her breasts pressing hard against his shirt, her hand snaking up to wrap around the back of his neck, urging him onwards, refusing to allow him even the smallest break.

He'd had a lot of lovers, over the last few years, but Artemis was the most beautiful of them. When they were young, he'd had a crush, definitely. But she had been with Wally and Wally— Wally had been it's own problem, because he'd had eyes for Wally, too, but lacked the capacity to really understand those feelings, at the time.

But Artemis, now, was here, and every bit what he had once thought she might be. And he relished in it and in her as the night went on, exploring her, finally, as she explored him— alive and whole again.


	4. Chapter 4

Robin woke in the morning to the warmth of his bed partner and the trickle of sunlight streaming in from his parted curtains, which had been left ajar from Artemis' entry the night before. She was comfortable against his side, stretched out and asleep, and he hesitated to move, lest he wake her, but the pain of the morning drove him from her side.

He ached, in the way he did on the worst days: his ears rang loud enough to make him dizzy and drive nausea into his gut, his skin prickled, each careful breath, drawn slow to try and steady the nausea, burned. He squeezed his eyes closed, willing it to pass, a steady tremble running through him as he brought his hands up and pushed the palms against his eyes, blocking out all light. Artemis stirred from beside him but he ignored her, focused on the pain, focusing on _not_ focusing on the pain in the hopes it would pass.

After a moment, when it didn't pass, he rolled over and fumbled for his nightstand and the bottle he kept in the drawer there. Artemis, from his side, called over to him, but her words came to him as if through a curtain of water, warped and drowned down by the steady ringing. A hand touched his shoulder and he started and almost sent the contents of his now open pill bottle flying onto the floor, but he managed, at last, to swallow one down dry, tossing the bottle aside.

He fell back over and lay still long enough that Artemis came and went, and when she returned, she pressed a cool, damp cloth against his head. It was enough of a shock that he opened his eyes to see her looming over him and he blinked back confusion, remembering Talia's face in the same way, looking over him as a mother might.

But Artemis' expression was pinched with concern, her lips drawn into a tight frown, and she swept his hair back gently. Hers was the face of a lover, of an old friend, and it was different but all the more comforting because of it.

"You're hot," she told him, and he forced a smile.

"I know," he croaked and she gave him a look, rolling her eyes.

"Not like that, idiot," she said. "You skin is burning. You're in pain."

The dizziness was slowly subsiding with his stillness and he drew in his deepest breath yet, flinching at the pain of it. Artemis sat beside him, still stroking his hair, eyes raking over him. "What's going on?" she asked. "Are you sick."

"Not sick," he murmured, closing his eyes. He scrubbed a hand across his face, sighing. The cool cloth helped his head, at least, and drove away the headache that would normally be coming on with the slow subsiding of the ringing in his ears.

Slowly, the pain withered enough that he could stomach speaking, and he gave it a shot, desperate for a conversation that might serve as a better distraction.

"You're asking all the wrong questions," he murmured and she turned to meet his eyes, her hand dropping from his forehead. She looked taken aback at his statement and she pursed her lips as if considering but didn't answer. Maybe she knew what he meant, maybe she didn't.

"Maybe, maybe you could start with 'how are you alive' or 'how are you not still dead?' Or, I don't know, any number of the other questions I know you've got for me right now."

She looked away for a moment, her gaze drifting to the open window. Noise from the street below filtered through, a steady backdrop. Finally she spoke, turning to meet his eyes. "After I ran into you last week, I called my sister."

Her sister, Cheshire, assassin in the League of Shadows. She didn't say anything else for a long pause and he had to ask. "How'd you make the connection? Between me and the League?" His mouth was dry as he spoke but the anxious pounding of his heart was a suitable distraction from the pain.

She shrugged. "I'm not sure," she said. "I needed answers and I have connections. My sister has hers. I figured she might know something, or- I'm not sure what I was thinking but she called me back last night, and she had the answers I was looking for."

Her eyes flickered down to him and he struggled upright and shifted so that he was against the headboard. She didn't try to help him, just watched as even that much effort nearly drained him.

"What did she tell you?" He asked. He refused to look at her, looked anywhere but at her and eventually settled his gaze on a dark spot on the ceiling.

"She said Ra's all Ghul brought someone back with the Lazarus pit that he shouldn't have," her voice was almost monotone as she said it and he had to fight the urge to look at her for some hint of the emotion she was feeling. But he couldn't face it, so his eyes stayed fixated on the ceiling. "Five years ago."

She let the statement hang in the air and he felt her eyes on him. "You'd been dead a while, when he brought you back," she said. "You came back crazy and murderous."

"Broken," he echoed aloud, thinking back to that first painful breath of cold air as he'd emerged from the Lazarus Pit. "I came back broken." Just saying the words made his throat tight and he squeezed his eyes closed, looking for a way to continue. She remained silent, leaving him with no out.

"I didn't remember anything, when he brought me back. I was— I was just this empty shell of rage, barely surviving, starving and freezing on the streets of an unfamiliar city." He ran a hand through his hair, trying to find a way to delay the inevitable, but he had nothing. This was the moment he had feared, looking his past in the eyes and telling the body count, the hard times, the pain, the trail of chaos he had blazed across the mountains of East Asia. "Then Talia found me. She helped me."

He looked over to Artemis, finally daring to meet her eyes. "Talia Al Ghul?" she asked, for the sake of clarity and he nodded. She reached out and caught his hand, twining her own fingers between his. It was no more comforting than her doing nothing, but her eyes stayed fixed on his, her face betraying no emotion one way or another as he continued, and that was enough.

"Talia said it was a side effect of the Pit," he told her, squeezing at her hand. "I sought vengeance against my killer, and so I sought out those who resembled—" He let himself trail off, closing his eyes briefly. He never really thought about his own death, though he dreamed of it often. It felt more real, now, speaking it out loud. "I killed a lot of people," he said at last. "And I didn't even know I had been doing it. By the time Talia found me, I was barely sane."

Artemis broke eye contact first, looking away, an unreadable expression crossing her face. He kept going, the words too much _there_ in his head now to contain them. "She found a way to help me, to make my mind right again. And I remembered. I remembered _all_ of it, even the innocent people I had killed, before I was myself again."

He felt suddenly empty, putting himself out there, finally saying it out loud. But it was more akin to being numb than it was to having a weight lifted off his shoulders. The weight was still there, even more so than before, with the absence of denial.

They sat there in silence for too long before he finally brought himself to speak again. His voice was a rasp, now, tired and anxious and worn. "Please, Artemis, say something."

She jerked her head up, meeting his eyes, and he saw that there were tears there, barely restrained. "Why not— Why not come back to us, why not _tell_ us that you were—" she trailed off, her voice cracking, and she shook her head, unable to finish.

It was his turn to refuse her gaze. He looked down at their joined hands, instead, finally pulling his own from hers. "I couldn't bear the thought of coming back and having to face who I'd become, I couldn't—" He sighed, letting his head fall back against the headboard. "I stayed with the League of Shadows, with Talia." What he did for the League remained unspoken between them, but he knew she knew. He didn't need to voice it.

"But you did come back," she said quietly, and it was the most relieved she had sounded since the conversation had begun.

He nodded but couldn't quite bring himself to immediately speak. There were so many things he could say about why he'd returned, but none of them were really as close to the truth as what she wanted to hear. "I just couldn't stay away, in the end" was all he told her.

"And now, what's going on?" she asked, and she had come full circle, at last, back to his pain, which had finally dissipated enough that it barely existed on the edge of his periphery. "This pain you're in, are you ill?"

He shook his head. "Everything has a cost," he told her. "What Talia did to me, to return me to myself—" He paused, searching for the words, for the best way to tell her. "I remember dying," he decided on at last. "And I suffer the pain of my death."

Her stricken expression made him realize, a little too late, that perhaps he'd used the wrong words. Artemis looked almost as if she might cry and he reached for her, grabbing her shoulder and squeezing it.

"It's really not so bad, most of the time," he told her. "I barely notice it, it's just— Sometimes it's worse."

She reached up and placed her own hand over his, where it sat against her shoulder. He didn't immediately speak and he felt suddenly anxious in the face of the prolonged silence.

"You cry out in your sleep," she told him at last and she hurt for him, he could tell, which was the last thing he'd wanted for her. "In pain and— and fear."

"I remember dying," was all he said, echoing it aloud as if it would comfort her, as if elaborating on his nightmares would bring her some sort of calm.

"All of us, when you died, all we could think about was— was how painfully you had died, how much you _suffered_." Artemis' eyes were red ringed from her unshed tears and she let out a long, low breath, leaning back. "And you're back now, and you suffer anyway, still."

And he did, he did suffer, but it was nothing like he _had_ suffered, when he'd really died, when he'd come back and spent his time hungry and cold and confused. He didn't want to tell her that, though, because somehow the thought of telling her all about that time, in any sort of detail, made him feel ill.

He let go of her and sat back and she leaned forward until she was curled up against him, head on his shoulder. He thought she might finally cry, but she didn't. It wasn't her. He couldn't bring to mind a time he had ever seen her cry, before.

"Did Batman ever tell you guys how I got captured to begin with? The circumstances leading to my death?" he asked after a bit of time had passed.

She shook her head against him mutely.

"I ran off on my own," he told her. He himself had hardly dwelled on it. He'd spent too long angry at himself for it, once he'd first remembered, but the League had been there and he'd cast that anger away with all of his other training. "Chasing a dumb lead that was an obvious trap." He wrapped an arm tight around Artemis. "My death was my own fault, no one else's. Certainly not yours or anyone else on the team. Certainly not Batman's."

They stayed that way, curled against each other in something maybe resembling a cuddle for a good long while. He didn't speak again for a long time, simply enjoying her presence, the distant hum of traffic from outside, the low hum of his heating unit turning on.

"Where is everyone now?" he asked after a while, when his curiosity could no longer be sated by the silence. He'd laid himself out and now he needed to know where the others were, what had become of them. Artemis' change was certainly a surprise, though not exactly out of left field. But the others—

"Scattered," she said, sitting up. She pulled herself from the bed and stalked over to the corner by the window, where a duffle bag had been tossed aside, hers, brought with her the night before. She was almost nude, still, draped only in his t shirt, which he suspected she must have thrown on during his bout of pain earlier, and he looked away as she bent over to rifle through the bag.

"Megan is still at Mount Justice," she continued, finally grabbing a the entire bag and coming back over. She tossed it onto the bed and settled onto it herself, next to him. She pulled from the bag a tablet and fiddled with it as she spoke. "She leads her own team now, a new generation of young heroes, like us. She's good at it. Kaldur's off the grid, on a hermitage of sorts. No one's heard from him in years."

"And Connor? Roy?" he asked, a lump forming in his throat. "Wally?" His best friend and Artemis' now ex, as far as he could tell. He was dying to know as much as he didn't _want_ to know, scared to learn what could've happened in the wake of his death.

She paused for a moment, looking almost tired all of a sudden. She passed the tablet over to him and he took it wordlessly. "They're all fine," she said. "But there's really something a bit more pressing to talk about."

He looked down at the tablet and on it were projected images of known supervillains. He recognized only a few. "What is this?" he asked, selecting one of the images. It was a villain known as Calculator. He'd heard of him in passing, but he was newer to the scene.

"They call themselves the Secret Society of Super Villains," she told him and he chuckled, swiping to the next villain. Madhatter, Robin was familiar with him.

"That's a bit of a mouthful," he said and she shrugged.

"I didn't come up with it. But anyway, they've recently turned their attention onto Bludhaven. I think they intend to use it as a sort of testing ground for a major attack," She reached over and pulled another folder from the bag, flipping it open. He spared it a glance and had to do a double take. It was a police file, and the top one was gruesome, paper clipped together with crimescene photos showing a dead woman whose face was contorted in a gruesome scream, stretched out even beyond human ability. "They're making a bomb of some kind, chemical in nature. Large enough that the fallout could spread across the entire state."

"How have I never seen this?" he asked, abandoning the tablet briefly to look over as she flipped through the images for him. There were more bodies, maybe ten of them in total, all as equally gruesome as the next.

Artemis pursed her lips. "Corruption runs rampant in this city," she said after a moment. "It's being covered up. These are just early experiments for a later attack, a larger scale one."

Robin turned his attention back to the tablet, scrolling through the villains involved. "Madhatter, Calculator, Blockbuster—" he stopped at the last one, his blood running cold. "The Joker."

She was quick to jerk her head up from what she was involved in and look over at him. "He's involved, though I don't know how much. If you aren't ready, if you can't—"

"No, no. I can handle the Joker," he murmured, rubbing at his head. "But Artemis, this is bigger than us. Some of these are big name villains." He swiped over again and sighed. "Lex Luthor? We need to take this to the Justice League—"

"No," she cut him off. "I'm not exactly welcome with the League," she snapped. "And besides, I've been tracking this for months, working out the loose ends. I know where they're based, where they're working on this. I know exactly where to hit them to stop it before it starts."

He shook his head, tossing aside the tablet. "Artemis, we're just two people."

"I know," she said, flipping closed her own file. "I want to bring the team together." She let the statement speak for itself and he fell quiet, considering, suddenly hesitant.

"Artemis," he began, placing a hand on her knee. "You just said Kaldur is unreachable and Megan is doing her own thing. You didn't even want to tell me about the others, about Roy and Wally—"

"Not Roy," she interrupted, shaking her head, her expression going dark. She looked almost older than she was, all of a sudden. "Roy's no good to anyone right now. Not Roy."

He drew his hand away as if stung, a sudden hollowness filling him. "What happened to Roy?" he asked and it was another fear of his, born to life. Something had happened to someone he had once cared for, still cared for, in some way.

"Roy's no good to anyone, Robin," she said. "He's an _addict_ , has been for years, and no one knows where he is. He could be dead by now, for all I know or care." It was cold but they'd never gotten along, even before.

Robin sucked in a sharp breath. "Oh," he said. "Oh. Because of—"

She shook her head furiously, stopping him. "No, unrelated to your death. He just— He went down the wrong path, would've happened either way." She stayed quiet for a moment. "Don't blame yourself for his mistakes."

He felt numb, despite her insistence. "But Wally and Conner, they're really fine, right?"

She smiled and it was almost wistful. "Yeah, they're really fine. Conner doesn't really do the hero thing anymore, he needed a change. Lives with Superman's parents on this really nice farm. He likes it there."

"And Wally?"

Her smiled dropped almost immediately and his stomach dropped with it. "His uncle died last year," she told him after an extended pause. "He's been the Flash ever since, so he's with the Justice League now, but—" She trailed off, laughing all of a sudden. "We aren't in touch, haven't been much since your death, really, but you know, I called him, when I ran into you. I wanted to tell someone, I had to say it out loud to make it real and—"

He reached out and caught her hand and she squeezed it.

"He told me to fuck off," she finished with a forced smile. "Can you believe it? Maybe you're right, maybe getting the team together for this— It's a bad idea."

He wanted to ask her what had happened between them that was so bad that he'd have that reaction to a phone call from her but it didn't seem the right time, not with the way she was squeezing his hand in turn, angry and tired.

"No," he said. "No, I think you were right to begin with. It could work and, anyway, what better options do we have?" They were both quiet for a moment. "Besides, maybe— Maybe it's time they know about me. I owe it to them. I can't keep existing, pretending the life I had before wasn't real, that the people my death impacted don't deserve the truth."

She looked almost choked up at his words. "Ok," she murmured. "Let's do it."


End file.
